It has been known to control foaming particularly in aqueous systems, by means of anti-foaming agents. In many industrial processes, which employ aqueous solutions or suspensions, the foaming is one of the most important problems. A number of suggestions have been made in the past, in order to avoid or to destroy such foam. Such suggestions describe the employment of silicon oil or silicon oil emulsions, dispersions of hydrophobic silica, compounds with fatty acid amides, long-chain alcohols, hydrophobic polyglycolethers, aluminum- and magnesium-stearates as well as mixtures of these products with one another.
All these suggestions aim at a solution to the problem in the most different product-technical areas, such as e.g. waste water treatment, paper production, sugar beet washing, emulsion polymerizations, as well as the preparation of dispersion dyes, where the using foam restrains not only the production, but also causes many problems to the user with regard to the appearance of painted surfaces and poor corrosion protection due to occluded bubbles.
The production of de-foaming compositions previously was technically costly and involved high energy costs as well as very complex de-foaming formulations.